When Love And Work Collide

You wake up in the morning and expect another boring day at the office: same old people, same stale coffee, same workload. Wouldn't it be great if your firm hired some great looking ray of light to spice up the mundane office environment? Of course it would, even if it means having to juggle work and love. Not too rough , you think. Well, think again. How does the size and culture of a company affect one's love and sex life?

Working for small companies offers employees the opportunity to develop great friendships that last beyond one's tenure at the company. Working in a large department or company allows employees to meet many interesting people, but doesn't allow everyone to know one another intimately. So what happens when one decides to get seriously intimate with a colleague? It depends. If you're lucky, you find eternal happiness; if you're not, misery is a word that comes to mind...

boy wants girl

The main advantage to pursuing a colleague is that she can judge your sense of humor, intelligence and demeanor. This increases your chances of landing the office bombshell, assuming of course that these are your strong points. But make no mistake about it; dating, or even pursuing a colleague, is a risky maneuver any way the dice fall.

Let's not even entertain the failure probability; let's enter the realm of wishful thinking and assume that you do get the girl. The obvious disadvantage to dating a colleague is that you are voluntarily submitting your personal life as office gossip topic numero uno... leaving yourself susceptible to rumors, innuendoes, half-truths, and endless "he said / she said" episodes.

boy gets girl... then what?

All that work, and now you wrote off all of the other girls in the workplace. Roll out the Nobel Prize for Sacrifice. Not necessarily. In my experience, focusing on one girl instead of being the office gigolo is a sound strategy. Girls are not dense; they quickly sense who is playing the field and who is courting material. Point your arrow in too many directions and you're asking to find yourself alone.

can you keep a secret?

The first dilemma that the office couple faces is whether or not their fling is subject to become public information or not. Assuming the two adults are consenting and one does not report the fling to a colleague or superior, then office cultures are increasingly blasé about inter-office relationships.

Not to suggest that a company-wide e-mail is the answer to inform colleagues, but admitting the truth only when asked about it is probably the best alternative. The logic is simple: speak the truth, but only when asked; do not assume that others care.

Obviously, supervisor/subordinate relationships are more sensitive, especially with the rise in sexual harassment lawsuits in the past years (by the way, as Chris Rock once asked, "What is sexual harassment? When an ugly man wants to get some?").